Released on June 25, 1982, John Carpenter’s The Thing, the first in the Apocalypse Trilogy, (The Thing, Prince of Darkness and In The Mouth of Madness), made me a lifelong fan of the genre.
I’ve talked about how an impossible-odds story appeals to me in the past, and I’ll say it again here. The idea of a group of rag-tag individuals banding together against the unknown gets me every time.
This movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. It attracts as it repels. How do you defeat something that takes you over at the molecular level?
I wonder, do the people who are consumed by the being die completely, or is the mind stuck inside it somewhere, witnessing the horror but unable to do anything about it?
When I watch this movie, another one also comes to mind: Leviathan, starring Peter Weller, and the late, Richard Crenna. If I recall correctly, the creature merged with its victims, fusing them together into a horrid, hydra-type being.
The difference, is that the thing hides in plain sight. It looks and talks like its victims, fooling all but the most observant.
How do you defeat something that takes you over at the molecular level?
What I’ve learned watching horror movies is that humor is an asset. I believe the two are closely related. One wrong turn and something meant to be funny turns flat. Another turn makes it disturbing.
Joaquin Phoenix did a masterful job of it in Joker. That stand-up bit was excruciating.
The infamous surgery scene in The Thing, creates tension, then ramps it up big time. The one-liner delivered by one of the supporting actors sums it up nicely: “You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me.”
No, my dude, it’s even worse than you can imagine.
What this scene does is allow us to take in the horror, process it, then let off some steam. But not too much. And we get to take a momentary breather.
We’re grateful that can watch from afar while empathizing as the crew deals with the sickening absurdity of the situation.
The shock and humor separates us from the alien, showcasing our humanity.
This is the bit that I love. Throw a protagonist with or without a group of supporting characters into a situation, and show me their humanity. Show me what separates them from the antagonist. And make them suffer for my entertainment.
I hope that my own writing is able to capture both the horrors of life with doses of comic relief along the way. It’s one reason why I tend to focus on one or two colorful characters, stretching their personalities just to the point of absurdity, injecting a little fun into an otherwise tense moment.
Overall, the movie critics deemed it a failure. It was released on the heels of E.T. and Blade Runner made its debut the same day. Now that I’m older, I’ll take either one of these films over E.T. My six-year-old self would say I’m insane.
It just goes to show, some movies don’t age as well over time, people’s tastes change, and genius is sometimes revealed in a second viewing.
I was stoked to discover that John W. Campbell wrote the novella, Who Goes There?, which first printed in August, 1938. I rushed to buy a copy and can’t wait to dive in.
There’s an introduction, written by William F. Nolan of Logan’s Run, and his screen treatment of the story is in the back of the book.
In it, Nolan talks about the initial release of The Thing, produced by Howard Hawks in 1951. Straying too far from the original, hardcore fans were not pleased with this rendition and it was back to the drawing board.
The next time your work is ignored or receives negative feedback, keep this movie, now a cult classic, in mind. Maybe you haven’t reached your audience just yet.
This is the first topic in my Book of Master Lists, where I try to capture the essence of what gets me going as a writer.
What is the culmination of who I am as an author and how I view the world?
Oh, I chose to house it all in a Moleskine Expanded. We’ll see how the paper holds up.
